With radiology continuing to refine its niche in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment, Sruti Nataraja, MPH, managing director at the Advisory Board Company, believes that one of the major themes coming out the past year is, “The consumer-driven health care market has arrived.”

With the possible exception of diffusion-tensor MRI for concussion in athletes, no clinical imaging procedure stands a chance of bumping information technology-with its attendant ripple effects on regulatory compliance and business performance-off radiology’s figurative front page in 2016.

As the "volume to value" movement reshapes healthcare economics across the U.S., radiology is reminded daily that it is by no means exempt from the new and somewhat nebulous fiscal demands.

April 16, 2015, marked the beginning of a seismic shift in the healthcare landscape. On that day, the U.S. Senate passed H.R. 2, the MACRA, which repeals the SGR formula, extends the CHIP for two years, institutes a 0.5% increase in Medicare reimbursement over the next four and a half years and encourages physicians to transition to APMs.

The time has come for the profession of radiology to embrace a label it has been furiously trying to beat back for years: commoditization. The battle against those who wield it as a pejorative is not just futile, it's also counterproductive.

When ACR's Radiology Leadership Institute honored Leonard Berlin, MD, with a 2015 Leadership Luminary Award this past August, some may have assumed Berlin was getting ready to take a bow and move on toward retirement.